In five days the House of Representatives is set to vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with. For any House representatives that may be reading this, SOPA is a bill which will allow the US government to shut down internet sites that contain "infringing material" and essentially destroys the freedom of speech and information which is the Internet and mankind's crowning achievement in anything ever.

The very worst thing about this awful, awful bill is that it is virtually guaranteed to pass due to our political system. We will allow the government to destroy the most important thing ever made by man. Why? Why can't we stop this?

You can contact your representatives about it, as Wikipedia and some other sites have been urging. Hopefully the sheer number of people and organizations vocally against SOPA and PIPA will have some sort of impact on this shitstorm.

We can't stop this because corporate lobbying as rendered any notion of citizen input or participation in the legislative process a laughable absurdity. Any bill that your corporate masters want passed, will be passed; any bill they want to fail, will fail. Period.

SOPA is just one more bill in a long line of civil liberty destroying legislation that goes all the way back to Reagan. The ironic thing is that out of all the horrific shit that has passed through that fascistic nightmare we call congress in just the last decade or so, this is easily some of the least-horrible. Yet the whole fucking internet is going ballistic over it.

Don't get me wrong, I think SOPA is terrible. But I find it both hilarious and disgusting (and predictable) that the only thing the fat fucks on the internet give a collective shit about, to the point of several pathetic displays of "protest", is a bill that threatens to take their precious youtube away.

Nevermind that we don't have healthcare, or that corporations can donate infinite money to presidential candidates, or that arizona and georgia have become legitimate police states, or that our death squads are stomping around the middle east murdering and then pissing on civilians with impunity.

No, the only thing that spurs their massive carcasses to direct action and outrage is fucking SOPA. Otherwise the internet greaseshits are content sit and play skyrim while world burns down around them.

Well obviously an internet-centric issue that doesn't divide people based on their political parties is going to cause more of a united response from internet users. I agree with Benway about most of the random stuff he brought up, but it's pretty easy to see why a bill that's harmful to a group would see the most blatant backlash from that group.

I don't know, I just hate when people try to rate the severity of an injustice and give a ruling on what an appropriate reaction would be based on other important but unrelated problems in the world, like there's a tier system for that shit.

Well obviously an internet-centric issue that doesn't divide people based on their political parties is going to cause more of a united response from internet users.

That's the problem though. That this is the one issue that doesn't divide internet dwellers on political lines. That doesn't mean that the SOPA issue is intrinsically apolitical. On the contrary, the SOPA issue is political as fuck.

I don't know, I just hate when people try to rate the severity of an injustice and give a ruling on what an appropriate reaction would be based on other important but unrelated problems in the world, like there's a tier system for that shit.

It's not like I'm saying you can't be angry about SOPA because POVERTY IN AFRICA YOU GUYS. I'm angry about SOPA. My problem is that this is the only issue with which the internet is willing to put aside politics and take collective action, even if that collective action is petty and stupid.

"For example, Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) recently made a statement against PIPA, saying that he would not vote for it "if it is not significantly improved.""

Quote

"Along similar lines, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) expressed the same sentiment as Udall (emphasis added): "I would not vote for final passage of PIPA, as currently written,"

Either this piece of legislation, superficially rewritten, or another, virtually identical piece of legislation will pass. This has happened many times before. A large public or congressional outcry makes a bill-as-written unpopular, so they kind-of-but-not-really rewrite it and pass it anyway.

It happened just a few weeks ago with the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. At first it required the military to detain any and all suspected terrorists, now it merely allows them to do so. Victory.

Hey Benway, did you know that the White House has promised to veto SOPA, mostly in response to the internet-wide protests that you deemed petty and stupid? Did you know that people can be angry about more than one thing at once? Did you know that you are hilariously dumb?

If I am understanding you correctly, your position is that public outcry over this bill has been both petty and retarded. However, that's only because it will potentially not last long enough to enact the desired result? And also you really have it in for nerds, probably been reading too many forums.

Public outcry/response over SOPA and PIPA legislation = good and effective

Public outcry/response over Megaulpoad being taken down = bad, could take the previous efforts back a step

Maybe Benway is meaning more the ridiculous Anonymous response stuff. Or maybe he means we aren't allowed to care about bad things because there are other different bad things going on at the same time, in which case, dude, really?

Logged

"Iíll retract the rape complaint from the wombat, because heís pulled out."

Hey Benway, did you know that the White House has promised to veto SOPA, mostly in response to the internet-wide protests that you deemed petty and stupid? Did you know that people can be angry about more than one thing at once? Did you know that you are hilariously dumb?

Yes, I am aware that people can be angry about more than one thing at once. I am not at all upset that people are angry about SOPA. I think it's great that people are angry about SOPA. I just find it sad/typical that large swaths of the internet are acting like this issue in particular is so heinous that it alone is worthy of the extra effort they've put into protesting it. Again, being angry is fine, my problem is that they seem to be putting in more effort into the SOPA thing than any other cause, and that their methods of protest are bizarre and in my opinion ineffective.

I expressed this sentiment in an extremely hyperbolic manner in my initial post, and if that led people to think that I was upset with people for being angry about SOPA, that was not my intention and I'm sorry. If the problem is that my post was just generally obnoxious, then I apologize for that too. It was my fault on both counts.

If I am understanding you correctly, your position is that public outcry over this bill has been both petty and retarded. However, that's only because it will potentially not last long enough to enact the desired result?

I called it petty and stupid both because of the reasons I gave above and because it's my belief that public outcries of this sort never have any actual effect on legislation beyond the superficial. Not in the last decade anyway. I am not surprised that the White House has said it will veto the bill, or that many senators have said they will not vote for it "as currently written". Again, this kind of thing has happened many times before.

It seems to me that when corporate interests are involved what the general public wants simply doesn't matter. In this case I could be dead wrong though. If that is true then I will be very happy and feel like an even bigger idiot.